Numpty @ Numpty @lemmy.ca

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Joined

2 yr. ago

Roblox is filled with "quality" content like this: https://www.roblox.com/games/8110845141/POOP-WITH-FRIENDS

My kids used to play on Roblox... then they invited me to try it... and I started watching what is going on in there. It's pretty bad. LOADS of grooming going on... shitty games... games that encourage anti-social behavior... horror games targeting under 5s... now they aren't allowed to play it anymore.

Germany has its own insanity in the housing market :-P I lived in Germany or several years. I rented vs buying and I dreaded moving because facing that shit show of a rental process (at least in places like Hamburg) was... too much. Queuing up with 100 other people all racing to fill in the rental application form first just so they'd get a chance at a place. I quickly learned to use an agency to line up rentals... and ended up renting a VERY nice newly built flat for the same price as the old many-times-renovated flats in the same district.

I did buy a house elsewhere in Europe and it was... interesting as an expat. It was substantially cheaper than Canada... granted it was many years ago, so not a fair comparison.

The Canadian government makes noises about "fixing" the housing crisis in Canada, but... I honestly don't think they can. Houses are currently priced out of reach... WAY out of reach for the average new home buyer. People can't save up a 5% to 20% down payment fast enough to keep up with the rising cost of living. The cost of everything is increasing at multiple times their potential salary increases (if they even get any).

Start with income perspective. The average annual salary in 2022 was just under $60,000. Nationally, the average house price in summer 2023 was a bit over $750,000. These incomes and house prices are affected pretty strongly by the lower incomes and lower housing costs in rural Canada vs the major cities like Vancouver and Toronto

So.. shift attention to the cities. In Toronto and Vancouver, the average house price is around $1,200,000 give or take a little. You need at a combined income of least $280,000 to qualify for a house like that (or have substantial equity built up in previous home purchases). Most people are earning at or close to the national average... with a few - especially those in STEM careers (sw devs for example) up over $100,000 per year.

I live in a suburb city (I own my house)... it's inconveniently located if you want/need to be in the core city centre for work (I'm about 3 hours commute right now if I needed to go in to a downtown office.. thankfully I don't). Houses on my street are relatively new (most built in 2019 and 2020). The houses currently for sale are listing between $1,250,000 and $2,350,000.

Renting can be really awful in Canada too... you get stunts like this https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/this-is-egregious-sisters-shocked-when-toronto-landlord-raises-rent-to-9-500-a-month-1.6548845 simply because they can...

tl;dr Housing in Canada is bonkers

The company I work for is one of many in the IT world that "gets it" that WFH is an advantage and makes employees happy.

No Windows boxes anywhere. Windows is banned as a base OS (allowed in VMs only). It's OSX or Linux only. I'm good with that :-) Oh that generous budget was $3000 USD to spend as I wanted on whatever equipment I wanted. Since I already have a desk, chair, monitor etc, I spent almost all of the budget on the laptop :-) It's a good'un. Hehe

But you'd have to install it yourself in a scenario where you manage your company machine yourself.

I'm permanently remote in my job. When I was hired, I was given a generous budget to buy whatever home office equipment I needed including whatever laptop I wanted. I was free to either buy a MacBook or a PC - if I bought a PC, I was required to wipe the OEM Windows OS and install whatever Linux distro I wanted (which is the choice I went with). I and a LOT of other employees run whatever Linux distro makes us happy. IT tracks the asset number, and that's it. There's no spyware...

That would explain a lot.. things seemed normal until about 2013...

There has been attempts at it in the past https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_car

It's like that with ANY new car/truck regardless of fuel type. The current generation of ICE/PHEV/EV vehicles are ALL incredibly complex machines. The days of purely mechanical controls, and a simple combustion engine ended back in the mid-1970s. The more complex they system the more potential points of failure. Not justifying the fails...

You should try immigrating to Canada. The barriers they put in place for skilled people are bonkers. I personally know of 3 doctors who all want to come to Canada, and 2 more physically IN Canada who are not allowed to work until they get a residency spot (despite being trained surgeons). They are trained/educated in accredited universities outside of Canada, so their credentials are not an issue... The medical board is the issue. They put so many barriers in place and intentionally artificially restrict the number of medical professionals who can enter. The potential doctors have to complete a Canadian residency and there's a VERY small number of spots.. the doctors also have to complete a series of lengthy exams that are eye wateringly expensive and time consuming. A lot of potential doctors that we desperately need in Canada give up and go work elsewhere in the Commonwealth/Europe/MiddleEast where they are welcomed and put to work almost immediately.

You and I see through the fluff... and we are in the minority. PP is just saying whatever people want to hear. No facts, no proof, just fluff that riles up the voters.

Configuration flag?

Sounds like Ubuntu underneath your Plasma. I've had the exact same experience when using Neon, Kubuntu, and Ubuntu+KDE. I install any non-Ubuntu based distro with KDE (like openSUSE) and whiz bang everything is working again.

Linux needs more GUIs for managing complex settings.

openSUSE has YaST which covers almost all complex settings... it's not perfect, but it tries

I wouldn’t go with Opensuse or Fedora for gaming.

Why? I use openSUSE Tumbleweed for gaming and it's been rock solid. Seriously, I've never really had any issues. It has its quirks, but they are easily "fixed" by adding Packman and the Nvidia repos... and running an update.

I've tried Ubuntu multiple times and it was always a shitshow disaster. Mint was OK-ish, but had Ubuntu-related silliness.

Kinda depends where you work.

I've been working full time in software dev and hardware dev since the mid-1990s. Through that whole time I've worked almost exclusively on (in the early days) Sun workstations, AS/400, and HPUX machines. This eventually transitioned to Linux and macOS (once it became Unix based). Over the past 7-8 years, every company I've worked for (primarily in backend software and "big data") has actually heavily restricted Windows within the company. Most have required high level approval to have a Windows machine... you had to have a damn good business reason to run Windows as your primary OS.

Windows is definitely the leader in generic desktop work, but... there are pockets out there of Linux/macOS-only. And... given the strong shift to browser based everything... Windows has lost its shininess for all but the most specific applications - eg graphics editing in industry standard tooling like Photoshop.

Thankfully the school my kids go to doesn't really give a crap what you run at home on on their laptops they used for school work as long as the kids are able to to their assignments. Almost 100% of what they do is browser based interfaces anyway, so it doesn't matter what the underlying OS is. I've made a point of teaching my kids Linux, macOS, and Windows. They've both asked to run Linux on their personal PCs... it was, and remains their choice.

If you take a typical 4L jug of milk and lay it on its side in your refrigerator without first making sure the lid is tight (right from the grocery store), it can and will slowly leak. I see this all the time. We buy a new 4L jug before the opened one is empty (kids go through a lot) and there's no room in the fridge to stand it upright.. The place we can fit an upright 4L jug is already occupied by the opened 4L jug, the applejuice box, etc.

So... it's not normal procedure to buy the new jug and just before we lay it on its side on the fridge shelf we check the lid is tight.... and no leaks.. forget and there's a small puddle in an hour or so.

The pressure on rentals has potential to become MUCH worse too if the interest rates start pushing people out of their current owned homes.

I'm a home owner. I am looking at a mortgage renewal in about 18 months. At the current interest rates I'm facing a painful mortgage payment hike. Can I manage it without extending my amortization period? Yes... painful, but yes. I can absorb the increase because I intentionally bought in a (at the time) marginally lower COL area at less than 50% of what I qualified for. Most people I know who bought around the same time went right to the max and they are screwed at renewal if rates don't drop by a substantial amount. In some cases they will be forced into extending their mortgages well beyond 30 years or forced to sell... if they sell, they have to live somewhere... they will transition to renting...

I can really relate to this. I lived outside of Canada for 25 years. I recently-ish moved back to Canada and am totally blown away by things here. Life isn't always amazing in any place you pick on the planet, but god damn, Canadians need to stop contemplating their collective belly button lint and focus on some of the massive issues that need attention.

I've been using Nvidia with Linux for a VERY long time. Currently I have computers running:

• GT1030 - two older PC
• GTX2060 Ti
• GTX 3050 Ti - laptop

They are all working fine with openSUSE Tumbleweed. I install openSUSE, add the Nvidia community repo (a couple of clicks), run updates once, and reboot. Everything just works after that. I can count maybe 3 times in the past 6 years that there was any issue at all.

Now Ubuntu and derivative... I've had a LOT of issues and weirdness... drivers failing, doing weird things etc.

Yeah I can see that being useful. We are planning to sell the house in about 18-24 months (assuming things don't totally collapse) and will have to start clearing out the cruft at some point. Things not good enough for a Craigslist sale, but still has life left if someone is creative.

Still... sigh.. Facebook...